A fresh bike will be posted every day Monday through Friday on the feed - if velospace stopped accepting bikes today we tweet out about 67 years worth of bikes at this rate!

Follow velospace on Twitter and get more bikes in your life.

- Greg

The trials and tribulations of velospace’s growth and impact on server architecture is documented in this blog and on the status updates twitter feed.

velospace was running on a MediaTemple Dedicated Virtual Base with upgrades for a total of 768mb of RAM.

velospace is now running on a MT DV Extreme with 2gb of RAM.

The problem with the old setup was that the virtualization software, Virtuozzo, has hard coded memory limits for processes. When velospace usage resulted in high load and memory use (e.g. when the site got a spike in traffic) Virtuozzo would hit its memory limit (kmemsize), shut down the Apache process for 5 minutes and then reestablish the process. MediaTemple doesn’t have Virtuozzo set up to allocate additional memory (in a burst-type configuration) when necessary - the software just kills processes.

The new server setup should take care of things for a while. In addition to more than double the amount of RAM the DV Extreme also has more CPU cycles allocated which should keep the site smoother under heavy load.

If you have any questions drop me a line.

- Greg

One of the first velospace users, Shiznaz, a/k/a/ Charlie Prinsep was killed by a drunk driver in August of 2007 while riding his bike in Canada. Some of Charlie’s friends and family have worked hard over the past two years to set up a not-for-profit group to spread Charlie’s love of bicycles: the Charles Prinsep Initiative.

In Charlie’s memory the group has launched a program to help youth from the Regent Park area of Toronto earn bicycles by participating in a build-a-bike summer workshop program. The program is called Charlie’s Freewheels. The pilot program has gone very well and the group is looking for volunteers and donations to help it grow.

velospace proudly sponsors the Charles Prinsep Initiative along with their pilot program Charlie’s Freewheels. Please consider donating if you have the means - this is a great cause in the name of one of the founding members of the velospace community.

From the CPI website:

In life, Charles held a steadfast belief that an individual’s actions could make a difference. He cared about the environment, and continually sought to find ways to reduce his own environmental impact. Charles was also passionate about cities, constantly envisioning simple and practical ways in which the urban culture he so appreciated could become more environmentally responsible. Charles was also a deeply creative person; for him, art was everywhere and in everything. Cycling was a medium that connected so many of his interests; bicycles offered him an environmentally sustainable transportation alternative through which he could explore the urban environment, and were also works of art in themselves. We invite you to get to know Charlie. Visit his blog: The Double Cross.

- Greg

The fix is convoluted but follows these steps, posted here for posterity:

Step 1: reestablish baseline permissions in the corrupted tables
INSERT INTO users (uid, name, mail) VALUES ('0', '', '');
INSERT INTO users_roles (uid, rid) VALUES (0, 1);
INSERT INTO node_access VALUES (0, 0, 'all', 1, 0, 0);


Step 2: empty the cache and sessions tables

Step 3: clear out anonymous access rights in /admin/access

Step 4: reestablish anonymous access rights in /admin/access

Thanks for your patience - looks like we are back in business.

- Greg

In addition to the small site updates, 2009 has brought quite a few anti-spam measures, including: a 60 second comment delay, 15-day wait period for new users to post sales, and a one forum thread per day per user limit.

In continuing the effort to update the site, I have a few small changes to let you know about:

• The “for sale” button at the top of the site has been replaced by a “buy / sell” button that links you to either the used bike marketplace to browse items for sale or the used bike parts want to buy thread on the forums. Thanks to user eaglerock for the excellent suggestion.
• The “thumbnails” button at the top of the site has been renamed “photos” to be a bit more clear about what you are getting when you go there. The bike thumbnail photos page itself now has browse by category links at the top so you can easily drill down into your favorite type of bike.

- Greg

• velospace bicycling forum users can create one new thread per day. This was put in place to prevent trolls from spamming like mad, you can make as many comments as you like.
• added velospace tweet tracker to the front page. If you are on twitter, follow-us and include “velospace” in your tweets to show up on the tracker.

As always, I am always open to suggestions for features, bug fixes, and tweaks to the site. Drop a note on the forums or send me some direct feedback.

- Greg

New users must wait 15 days before posting sales.

15 days may seem like a long time, but with nearly 25,000 members velospace has grown leaps and bounds over the past few years. In order to cut down on spammers and scammers the quarantine on posting sales should cut back on fraudulent posts in the velospace used bike marketplace.

This measure, combined with the 60 second comment delay put in place in April 2009 are both useful tools in the fight against the barbarians at the gate. Next up is throttling user account creation by the same IP. Some spammers will create 15-20 accounts in a row with spam URLs in the profiles to try and get some extra Google juice. What they haven’t recognized is that all the URLs are nofollow so the links are meaningless… but tell that to an automated spambot and you don’t get much in return!

If you have any suggestions, as always, please contact me.

- Greg

• added reload button to bottom of Thumbnails page
• 50% more space in bike text fields
• reduced vertical spacing on site by moving search box up and crunching space between menu and main content pane
• the list of forum discussions started are now properly sorted on user profiles, see e.g. Greg’s profile
• the velospace home page includes the 5 most recent velospace related tweets

If you have any suggestions please add them to the feature wish list thread.

- Greg

The Illini 4000 for Cancer is a bike ride across America to raise money and awareness of cancer issues and cancer’s effects on our lives. Every summer a group of University of Illinois students band together and ride their bikes for 4,000 miles from coast-to-coast in support of this cause through many towns and cities.

The Illini 4000’s mission:

While riding across the country, the Illini 4000 Bike America Team interviews cancer patients and survivors from all walks of life. We believe that everyone has a story to tell; from the truck driver in New York City to the Wheat farmer in Colorado, everyone has a story tell. The purpose of this project is to illustrate cancer’s influence on American life, and how individuals respond to cancer according to their religious beliefs, location and socioeconomic status. Since 2007, the Illini 4000 riders have recorded the stories of over 30 cancer patients and survivors.

Interested in helping? Pitch in one of three ways:
1. Donate money
2. Host the riders when they are in your town
3. Sponsor the ride

velospace and the Illini 4000 will be working together this summer to support this great cause. Riders will be chiming in on velospace as the ride progresses give us updates and take part in the velospace community.

Continue this discussion on the velospace forums

- Greg

Now RSS feeds and tags are back! Go forth and enjoy the good things in life like the Fixed gear, Single speed, Track bike page (and feed).

- Greg